December 12, 2023 — Despite the theme of this here blog, I did actually decorate for Christmas this year. I mean, originally, I had visions of turning my house into Scrooge’s—a Marley knocker on the front door maybe, a ghost in chains and cash boxes flying from a window. A cauldron on my roof with someone boiling in their own pudding, a stake of holly through their heart. Tiny Tim in a broken puddle at the bottom of my doorstep. A Grim Reaper pointing at a tombstone on the front lawn that reads, RIP JWO.
You know, decorating out of defiance. Or depression. Or
disgust. Like Clark Griswold stapling his flannel sleeve to the roof just to
avoid the family get-together of his own making.
Instead, I decorated. Mildly. Just the tree inside, and
outside a row of lights along the roof, a couple of reindeer in the yard. A
giant light-up Santa face on the wall like that thing Sean Connery rode in
Zardoz. Some blow molds that I just dropped into the dead leaves that I never
raked. Took about two hours to do it all.
But why, right? In a season where I’m anti-season, dear
god-in-a-manger, why?
For the kids. Of course, for the kids. Intrinsically, but
also for some much-needed continuity in their lives. They’re not getting it
from anywhere else.
But when the girls aren’t around, the Christmas tree is
dark. And while the outdoor lights are on a timer, those decorations
transmogrify when the house is empty. The roof lights become a string of bared
teeth. The Santa face, a severed trophy head. The grazing deer one stray hunter
from being plastic jerky. The blow molds? Well, blow molds are always a little
bit depressing already.
But I did enjoy putting up our tree. Completely because it
was an activity with the girls. Watching them fight over their favorite
ornaments. Watching the five-year-old overweight the bottom branches and the
older two surreptitiously fixing them for her. Hearing them laugh as I try to
straighten the star at the top and failing miserably for half an hour.
Listening to the annual argument of whether we should set it to white lights or
color, blinking or static. The only sad part was me trying to toss away the
previously meaningful ornaments as mere hunks of metal and glass and plastic,
and my oldest trying to save them like an NHL goalie. Or just like a teenager
trying to save the memory of her family.
But I’ve grown to like my dark Christmas tree. It’s sad, sure. But it’s also a great metaphor.
Battle against the winter and death dark all you want, keep those lights burning as festively as possible through the shortening days and the deepening snows (and New Englanders keep up Christmas lights for months after December 25), but in the end, that glorious thing that has inspired countless songs and been the centerpiece of revels for centuries…is just getting tossed onto the curb or shoved back in the attic, depending on if it was a live tree or a fake one.
Now imagine that garbage truck rumbling down the streets of your
neighborhood, dead trees prostrate by the mailboxes, the whole thing a bizarre
reenactment of corpse wagons picking up plague victims, all soundtracked by O
Tannenbaum.
If that doesn’t shake you from your sugar-plum coma, I don’t
know what would.
Instead, we should keep them dark and then throw them out to
the strains of Fairytale of New York (RIP, Shane…you should have been the name
on my Ghost of Christmas Future tombstone), while lifting a glass of whiskey
and promising ourselves that next year, we’ll do better. Although we know deep
down and long after the throat burn ceases, that we probably won’t.
Dark Christmas trees are the only real Christmas trees.
Just don't tell my youngest that yet.
